


i'd be afraid

by watfordbird33



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Full Moon, M/M, One Shot, Post-Sirius Black in Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 10:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16931859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: Even in Azkaban, Sirius's life was clocked in moons.





	i'd be afraid

**Author's Note:**

> Alcohol, smoking, language.

“Are you afraid?”

“Only a little,” Remus said. He had had some wine already and it was showing in his eyes. “Less every moon.”

“I’d be afraid,” Sirius said; “every time.”

“Well, you have the luxury of imagining it.” Remus picked up his wineglass again. His hands were shaking but you would have only seen it if you knew him very well. Sirius reached out almost involuntarily and help him steady the goblet. “For some of us it’s a reality.”

There was a pause, and Sirius went and got a glass. When he turned around with the corkscrew Remus was looking at him with a kind of ugly bare hunger all over his face. “You haven’t changed,” Remus said.

“By whose standards.”

“By mine, fuckwit.”

For lack of a comeback Sirius poured some wine and drank it and looked at Remus through the burgundy. The dog sometimes saw things in red but mostly just in black and white. It was the way the color circuits got scrambled from human to dog; Sirius didn’t know exactly what. Remus had read about it a long time ago.

“If you’re up I’ll have a cigarette,” Remus said.

“I thought you’d quit.”

“I had.”

Sirius lit one for him. Then one for himself. He hadn’t smoked in months and the first drag tasted sooty and awful but his second one was nice. Remus had gone back to the book in his lap and from behind him Sirius watched the movement of his lips around the cigarette.

“You can sit down,” Remus proposed, after a while.

“I might fall asleep.”

“Haven’t you been sleeping well?”

Sirius hesitated. “Like shit, really.”

“Is it that mattress?”

“Just the moon.”

Remus turned around to look at him. “Is it really bad? Every month?”

“It used to be worse.”

“When you couldn’t--”

“When I couldn’t see you,” Sirius said baldly, “or touch you; you know, have some sort of inkling. That you were all right.”

Remus put his cigarette out in the ashtray and lifted the ashtray to put his book under it and then got up out of the leather chair and came into the kitchen where Sirius stood, with his wine, at the place the counters joined. He put a hand on Sirius’s shoulder and Sirius looked at how the bones all stuck out.

“I did miss you,” Remus said.

“I hoped you did.”

“I was angry, but--”

“I was angry, too.”

“At me?”

Sirius shook his head. A bit of the wine slopped out of the goblet and onto his wrist. “At a lot of things,” he said, “a lot of people. Everyone but you.”

“I kept seeing your face,” Remus said.

“I know,” Sirius said. He looked at Remus and pictured kissing him. “Even when I’d forgotten, the dog saw yours.”


End file.
